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This presentation provides an overview of the aerospace supply chain and how the AAM Supply Chain Working Group will help to make it more sustainable and resilient. The urgent needs are building a tiered system, a modeling and simulation platform, and an electronic exchange platform.
Presentation is to inform/update audience about NASA's role in helping to ensure a resilient Aerospace Supply Chain. This audience of manufacturers and supply chain experts are from a broad range of industry.
New aircraft, such as electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles, are being developed to support advanced air mobility. This talk will address gaps and risks in the aerospace supply chain and discuss how to identify and develop resiliency approaches.
Aerospace supply chain and high volume manufacturing needed to achieve Urban Air Mobility (UAM).
Opportunities for developing a sustainable U.S. aerospace supply chain and manufacturing--especially for emerging technology-- given current state and future needs.
Manufacturers in Michigan to enter the aerospace manufacturing and supply chain ecosystem. How they can support U.S. competitiveness in the aerospace industry.
The Supply-Chain Optimization Template (SCOT) is an instructional guide for identifying, evaluating, and optimizing (including re-engineering) aerospace- oriented supply chains. The SCOT was derived from the Supply Chain Council s Supply-Chain Operations Reference (SCC SCOR) Model, which is more generic and more oriented toward achieving a competitive advantage in business.
Development schedules and a highly dynamic supply chain are a challenge to developers of complex systems produced at low volume. Flaws in designs, parts and materials availability problems, poor manufacturability, and a lack of knowledge about critical items and key process attributes can be realized well before traditional second-party quality assurance activities begin. Supplier audits and product inspections may have little mitigating effect once these foundational problems have been realized. Their impacts can be significant lifecycle disruption, cost overruns, inability to deliver to plan, and even project cancellation. AS9145, Requirements for Advanced Product Quality Planning and Production Part Approval Process, can be used to drive quality engineering practices into early development lifecycles to significantly reduce this late-cycle risk and to reduce the cost of quality overall. Since its initial publication in 2016, it has had very limited adoption by the DoD, no adoption by NASA, and sparse adoption in the aerospace and defense supply chain. A task group within the Aerospace Industries Association's (AIA) Joint Strategic Quality Council (JSQC) identified that both acquirers and suppliers see as AS9145 as a cost-adder and are hesitant to use it as an alternative to late-stage-heavy quality assurance approaches. A lack of prior use creates large capability gaps in request-for-proposal (RFP) teams, proposal teams, suppliers’ quality management systems (QMS), and in experienced personnel executing the early lifecycle approach. To create a more realizable on-ramp for using AS9145 in the space and defense sectors, the AIA JSQC task team created five deliverable requirements descriptions (DRDs) that can be used in a contract to begin to engage both parties in early lifecycle quality engineering and quality assurance activities, that reduce exposure to late-stage cost and schedule collapse due to unidentified risks in design, supply chain, and manufacturability. These DRDs drive the parties to engage in planning and analysis discussions early on to understand what production risks can be known and how they will focus resources based on safety criticality and the key elements of design and construction. The suppliers and acquirers who will produce the data and information required by the DRD will be able to incrementally evolve their QMS and the acquirer will incrementally be able to track and understand the benefits of cost shifting from late to early development phases. A white paper describing this approach and the five recommended DRDs will be published by the AIA in late 2024 or early 2025.
Supply chain has brought up many challenges to the current aerospace industry (e.g. limited sources, lack of inventory, and cyber security). The purpose of this research is to develop a web-based modeling and simulation platform for supply chains relating to Advanced Air Mobility and vertical take-off and landing vehicles (VTOLs).
Over the last two to three decades, the balance of influence within the electronics industry has shifted decisively towards the consumer electronics and information technology products, away from the defense or aerospace markets. This shift towards the commercial markets has changed certain ground rules in the electronics industry. Reliance of the aerospace industry, in particular, on components from supply chains dedicated to other products, or cross-vertical product integration, creates a supply web and introduces significant risks that are not necessarily present for volume-driven electronic products. Many of the unique risks in the aerospace industry emanate from the key characteristics of this industry. Although selection and usage of commercial electronics in NASA flight hardware is possible at a comparable (and in many cases lower) level of risk to that of employing parts that are screened to military or NASA specifications, for a large majority of flight projects it is difficult to distinguish the difference in on-orbit performance or reliability for parts screened at any level, or commercial parts that have no additional screening performed by the government. This paper identifies several bases for establishing context and developing unique or alternative approaches for successful parts selection and application within NASA and across the commercial space community.
Opportunities for college students studying aerospace. Presentation covers trends in aircraft manufacturing, supply chain, and airspace operations as well as research and development opportunities at NASA.
The aerospace community faces tremendous challenges with continued availability of existing material supply chains during the lifecycle of a program. Many obsolescence drivers affect the availability of materials: environmental safety ahd health regulations, vendor and supply economics, market sector demands,and natural disasters. Materials selection has become increasingly more critical when designing aerospace hardware. NASA and DoD conducted a workshop with subject matter experts to discuss issues and define solutions for materials selections during the lifecycle phases of a product/system/component. The three primary lifecycle phases were: Conceptualization/Design, Production & Sustainment, and End of life / Reclamation. Materials obsolescence and pollution prevention considerations were explored for the aforementioned lifecycle phases. The recommended solutions from the workshop are being presented.
In this paper we provide a snapshot of the commericial industry trends and how they may impact electronics in the aerospace environment. Impacts will be felt in the areas of: reliability, assembly methods, cost drivers, supply chain selection and alternate materials selection.
NASA MSFC is developing several areas of additive manufacturing (AM) for propulsion component and system applications. These developments include new AM process and material development, large-scale AM pathfinder component fabrication and hot-fire testing, AM-centric design methodology, modeling and simulation, post-processing advancements, and new design applications of AM in aerospace. Some specific areas NASA has focused is the development and commercial infusion of AM supply chain for materials such as copper-alloy GRCop (Cu-Cr-Nb), Hydrogen-resistant alloys (NASA HR-1, JBK-75), refractory-based alloys (C-103, W, Mo, new formulations), and bimetallic and multi-metallic AM processes. Additional efforts have been focused on large scale AM demonstrating complex thin-wall structures up to 60” diameter using directed energy deposition. Material characterization, properties and component hot-fire testing has been completed using many of these newly developed AM alloys/processes. NASA has also focused on improvements to post-processing including powder removal, surface enhancements, and support removal to further realize cost and schedule benefits to the overall supply chain. These developments are part of the NASA Rapid Analysis and Manufacturing Propulsion Technology (RAMPT), Low Cost Upper Stage Propulsion (LCUSP) and Long Life Additive Manufacturing (LLAMA) projects, in addition to internal IRAD, and external collaborations.
Over the last few decades, advances in high-performance computing, new materials characterization methods, and, more recently, an emphasis on integrated computational materials engineering (ICME) and additive manufacturing have been a catalyst for multiscale modeling and simulation-based design of materials and structures in the aerospace industry. While these advances have driven significant progress in the development of aerospace components and systems, that progress has been limited by persistent technology and infrastructure challenges that must be overcome to realize the full potential of integrated materials and systems design and simulation modeling throughout the supply chain. As a result, NASA's Transformational Tools and Technology (TTT) Project sponsored a study (performed by a diverse team led by Pratt & Whitney) to define the potential 25-year future state required for integrated multiscale modeling of materials and systems (e.g., load-bearing structures) to accelerate the pace and reduce the expense of innovation in future aerospace and aeronautical systems. This report describes the findings of this 2040 Vision study (e.g., the 2040 vision state; the required interdependent core technical work areas, Key Element (KE); identified gaps and actions to close those gaps; and major recommendations) which constitutes a community consensus document as it is a result of over 450 professionals input obtain via: 1) four society workshops (AIAA, NAFEMS, and two TMS), 2) community-wide survey, and 3) the establishment of 9 expert panels (one per KE) consisting on average of 10 non-team members from academia, government and industry to review, update content, and prioritize gaps and actions. The study envisions the development of a cyber-physical-social ecosystem comprised of experimentally verified and validated computational models, tools, and techniques, along with the associated digital tapestry, that impacts the entire supply chain to enable cost-effective, rapid, and revolutionary design of fit-for-purpose materials, components, and systems. Although the vision focused on aeronautics and space applications, it is believed that other engineering communities (e.g., automotive, biomedical, etc.) can benefit as well from the proposed framework with only minor modifications. Finally, it is TTT's hope and desire that this vision provides the strategic guidance to both public and private research and development decision makers to make the proposed 2040 vision state a reality and thereby provide a significant advancement in the United States global competitiveness.
Additive Manufacturing (AM) has become a prominent technology of interest for manufacturing propulsion components and gaining attention across the aerospace industry. AM is maturing at a rapid pace and providing new design opportunities, novel materials, new industries and supply chains resulting in programmatic and technical performance improvements. The successful use of AM requires a methodical and intentional approach to understanding the concept to utilization lifecycle for AM. This course will provide an overview of the various steps in AM process trades, design, build process, post-processing, certification and infusion of AM. This will provide various lessons learned and experiences that were captured in a recent AIAA textbook titled "Metal Additive Manufactuging for Propulsion Applications" by the session chairs and industry colleagues. This course will include specific liquid rocket engine component examples and that went through the AM lifecycle including hot-fire testing.